


Hang on Tight

by RosiePaw



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-31
Updated: 2009-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-05 13:36:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/42299
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RosiePaw/pseuds/RosiePaw
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p><a href="http://deelaundry.livejournal.com/129090.html">Telling</a> by Dee Laundry really bothered me because the characterization of Sheppard was thoroughly convincing - but not one I wanted to accept. I dealt with this by challenging myself to write a fic using the same premise but with a happier ending. The result has turned out to be longer and darker than I expected, and the ending is indeed happier but not necessarily happy-ever-after.</p>
    </blockquote>





	Hang on Tight

**Author's Note:**

> [Telling](http://deelaundry.livejournal.com/129090.html) by Dee Laundry really bothered me because the characterization of Sheppard was thoroughly convincing - but not one I wanted to accept. I dealt with this by challenging myself to write a fic using the same premise but with a happier ending. The result has turned out to be longer and darker than I expected, and the ending is indeed happier but not necessarily happy-ever-after.

The men stand in the plaza in the pre-dawn chill, waiting.  A few speak quietly in pairs or small groups.  Most are silent, watching the main street leading to the plaza, listening for the first squeak of cart wheels, the shuffle of plodding hooves.  Their ragged shirts and trousers are rank with sweat.  Despite the chill now, by mid-morning the heat will be fierce.  And it’s hard to keep clean when the only clothes you’ve got are the ones on your back, when your only chance to wash comes from brief moments snatched at a public fountain or pump.

There are no women in the group.  The ones who bring their carts to this particular plaza, they won’t be looking for women.

There!  The line of carts appears.  The scraps of conversation cease.  The lead cart lumbers to a stop when it reaches the centre of the plaza.  The man sitting next to the driver stands up, looks over the waiting men.  He has their absolute attention.

“Digging and hauling – two dozen of you!”  And the men on the ground go wild, shoving, yelling, waving their arms, desperate to get the standing man’s attention.  Me!  Choose me!  I’m strong, I work hard, I don’t make trouble!  Me!

The man standing on the cart – the crew boss – eyes them shrewdly, ignoring those whose stance betrays illness or injury, those who are too old or too young.  When he can, he hires men whom he knows are reliable.  That one there, he recognizes that man.  Taller than most, no skinnier than many others.  Scruffy dark hair and beard.  Yeah, he recognizes that man, that man’s been coming here a few months now.  The crew boss won’t hire him today for the same reason he hasn’t hired him before.  That man’s too smart, too defiant – you can see it in the way he holds his head.  That man will make trouble.  There are plenty of others who won’t. 

***

“We got lucky again, Sheppar’.”  Daino grins, showing his broken teeth.  The other man shrugs, nods.  They _did_ get lucky, hired on for the day by the very last cart.  Daino would have gotten hired faster if he hadn’t insisted on sticking with Sheppard.  They both know this. 

They don’t look back at the men left behind in the plaza, already moving away.  Once the day’s hiring is over, the City Guard turns up pretty quickly to disperse the leftovers.  The men who haven’t been hired will spend the rest of the day on the streets, trying to avoid both the Guard and the heat.  Sometimes you can earn a coin or two.  If you hang out at the edge of the Market, you might be in the right place at the right time when a crate needs to be hauled somewhere.  You might also be in the right place at the right time to grab a piece of food from a stall and run, but if you do that too often and get known for it, the vendors will put the Guard on you.

Begging’s another option, of course, but the _real_ beggars – too crippled or too old for physical labour – are jealous of their territory.  Each has their own corner or doorway.  They feud among themselves but band together surprisingly effectively to drive away would-be interlopers.

There are no good options.

***

Sheppard, Daino and several others like them spend the day helping dig a hole.  From the shape of it, it’s going to be the foundation for a small building of some sort.  It’s on the outskirts of the City somewhere, in the kind of neighbourhood that the Guard would chase them out of if they weren’t part of a work crew.  They dig in the clayey mud with the shoddy shovels they’ve been issued.  They pry out rocks, using the shovels (when possible), their bare hands (usually).  They carry buckets of mud and rocks up shaky ladders out of the hole to hand them off to others to dump somewhere, they never find out where.

At noon, a few boys come around with sacks and buckets.  Each labourer gets a piece of stale bread, a ball of _harez_, a chance at a ladleful of water from a bucket.  The water’s none too clean to start with, doesn’t become cleaner as one muddy-handed man after another grabs the ladle, drinks, dumps the ladle back in the bucket.

_Harez_ makes Sheppard think of chickpeas.  If you mashed chickpeas together to make a kind of stiff paste and shaped it into balls, that would be _harez_.  He tried to explain this to Daino and Gavvy once, back when Gavvy was still with them, back when the three of them were still telling each other stories about their homes.  Now it seems like too much trouble.

When it’s too dark to dig anymore, the filthy, weary men are herded back into the cart, taken back to the plaza.  They don’t get paid until then – the crew boss’ job includes returning them where they belong.  A day’s work pays three krallonar.  One will buy space on a lumpy pallet on a dormitory floor.  At this time of year it’s not much more comfortable than sleeping outdoors, but you won’t be rousted out by bored Guardsmen.  You _probably_ won’t be stabbed in your sleep for the clothes on your back. 

Two krallonar will buy supper: a bowl of thin stew, a piece of hard bread to dunk in it, a mug of thin beer.  The beer’s no luxury, given the unreliability of the local water.  Sheppard’s had the bloody flux a few times since he got here, been so sweaty and shaky and generally ill that he was hardly able to stand, let alone work.  No work means no wages for the day, no shelter, no food.  But Daino – and Gavvy too, when Gavvy was still with them – looked out for Sheppard, got him through it.  Sheppard’s never asked how and he’s never asked why.

Sheppard and Daino find a pump and, more or less, wash.  They buy supper.  Their usual dormitory keeper has kept them spaces for the night.  She likes them – they rarely turn up drunk, they rarely start fights, they don’t try to rob other customers.

They settle down for the night.  They’ll be up before dawn.  “Lot of building going on, Sheppar’,” says Daino.  “Lot of building this time of year.”

Daino’s right, which means that he and Sheppard might get lucky again tomorrow.  “Lucky” means that tomorrow might be just like today.

Sheppard doesn’t answer.  Once he might have made some response.  More and more often these days, he just doesn’t answer at all.

***

_John Sheppard was seven years old.  He was over at a friend’s house watching a cops show on TV.  When the cops captured a bad guy, one cop handcuffed him while the other intoned, “You have the right to remain silent.  Anything you say can and will be used against you.”_

_John nodded.  That made sense to him._

***

Sheppard’s military.  He’s been trained on what to do if he’s captured in enemy territory, if he becomes a POW.  But the thing is, he’s _not_ a prisoner, no more than Daino is or any of the other day labourers are.  They’re day labourers _because_ they’re free.  Because they’re not slaves.

There is no slavery in the independent City-State of Nieuyen.  When slaves escape or are freed in any of the surrounding kingdoms, princedoms, grand duchies, duchies, margravates or electorates, Nieuyen is where they usually end up.  It’s the only place they don’t have to worry about being re-enslaved.  Dying of hunger and poverty, yes; re-enslavement, no.

Sheppard is not a slave and technically he could leave Nieuyen any time he wanted and go home – if he had the vaguest idea as to where home lay from here.

There was a mission, an overnight mission to a supposedly friendly world.  Sheppard’s team paired off to share the two rooms they were given to sleep in.  What prompted the attack in the middle of the night, Sheppard doesn’t know.  He doesn’t know what happened to his team-mates.  He remembers fighting, he remembers something being thrown at his face, an explosion and an acrid, chemical smell.  When he regained consciousness, he discovered he’d been taken prisoner.

Neither his first set of captors nor any of the subsequent ones gave him any explanations.  They rarely spoke to him at all.  He overheard snatches of arguments about plans gone bad, deals broken, losses that had to be cut.  He got the impression that he was being transferred from place to place, from group to group, but he wasn’t always conscious and when he _was_ conscious he was often blindfolded.  There are too many gaps in his memory to reconstruct the trail.  He does remember being taken through a Gate at least once.

He remembers being dragged out of a dark warehouse with his hands bound and his legs shackled together, standing blinking in the strong sunlight and the chilly air, being led stumbling up rough steps onto a wooden platform in the middle of some kind of open-air market.  He remembers listening to the singsong chant of the auctioneer.  He remembers the moment when he realized he was being sold.

***

Daino was born a slave.  “Slow down, Sheppar’” he said again and again as they worked with the other slaves in the muddy spring fields.  “You want to work just hard enough to keep out of trouble.  You work harder than that, they’ll start pushing the rest of us too.  They’ll push us all ‘til we’re dead, ‘cause they know they can buy more just like us.  So slow down.”

“Easy, easy!” Daino told Gavvy.  “Being angry’s not going to help you, so let it go.”  Gavvy was younger than Daino and Sheppard, a farmer’s son who’d been sold into slavery a few years back after a disastrously bad season.  Gavvy wasn’t the oldest son – he didn’t stand to inherit the farm – but he was old enough to fetch a price that might get his family through the winter to try again next year.  It had come down to a choice of selling two of the younger children or selling Gavvy.  Gavvy’s father chose.

When Sheppard first arrived at the estate, he noticed that Daino treated Gavvy as a sort of younger brother.  It took him a while to realize that he himself had also been taken under Daino’s wing, that Daino was trying to teach him what Daino knew and Sheppard didn’t: how to survive as a slave.

There was some sort of unrest going on in the region.  The slave quarters buzzed with rumours.  Conflicting stories told of armed men – raiders? troops? rebels? – who came at night to kill slaves – or free them or steal them or recruit them – and burn estates.  Lots of rumours, no solid information.  Gavvy asked question after impatient question, trying to argue people into giving him a story that made sense.  Sheppard followed Daino’s example and listened instead, weighing each speaker’s credibility as best he could.

The fresh brand that marked Sheppard as property of the estate had only just healed the night that the darkness erupted in fire, shouts and screams, people and livestock running in confused panic.  Sheppard himself had started to move towards the sounds of fighting when Daino yelled, “No, Sheppar’, this way!”  He hesitated – and then Daino yelled again, “Help me get Gavvy safe!”

Later on Sheppard wondered if Daino had used those words on purpose, had known that a request for help would work where a simple directive wouldn’t.  Later on he found out that Daino had needed “help” with Gavvy because Gavvy had been trying to follow Sheppard.  But at the time, Sheppard had reacted by grabbing the younger man’s arm and hustling him after Daino.  They skirted the fighting, using outbuildings for cover as much as possible.  Early on Daino acquired a couple of empty sacks.  Occasionally he would tell Sheppard and Gavvy to wait, duck into a shed or barn for a moment and then re-emerge to rush them on.  Sheppard wondered how long Daino had been planning for this contingency.

Quite some time, as it turned out.  Daino seemed to have a fairly good idea of where he was leading them even after they left the estate’s boundaries behind.  They kept to the woods as much as possible and never chanced the roads at all by day.  The woods gradually thinned and the roads dwindled into tracks as the mountains rose around them.  The supplies Daino had gathered held out pretty well, although they had to huddle together for warmth at night in these higher elevations.

The morning of the sixth day found them climbing steeply.  After several hours, they reached a pass and looked down on clouds on the other side.  It wasn’t until they’d trudged down through the cloud layer that they could see the city laid out before them.

“Nieuyen,” explained Daino, “When we get there, we’re free.”

***

_When John was eleven, he sprained his ankle just before a family reunion.  That meant he got stuck sitting near his aunts pretty much the whole time.  It wasn’t much fun, but he noticed something kind of weird.  The aunts seemed to be really interested in which boys had girlfriends and which girls had boyfriends.  At one point, they corralled John’s teenage cousins, Larry and Patrick.  Larry said he didn’t have a girlfriend.  The aunts teased him a bit and let him go.  Patrick admitted to having a girlfriend.  The aunts spent the next 20 minutes interrogating him about her._

_Then cousin Rob came along and got into even bigger trouble.  Rob was 27 and had apparently been seeing one particular girlfriend for a while.  The aunts were all over him wanting to know when he and “that lovely girl Kimmie” were going to get married and “start a family.”  It took Rob even longer than Patrick to escape. _

_John promised himself he wouldn’t get caught in the first place._

***

The troubles over the border have unbalanced things in Nieuyen.  Escaped and freed slaves have always provided the City with means to replenish its supply of cheap labour, but now refugees are flooding in faster than they can be absorbed.  Too many desperate people are competing for too little work.

Former slaves who’ve been here for some years resent the newcomers.  They resent them even more fiercely because the day labourers born in the City resent _all_ the “foreigners” indiscriminately.  Respectable tradesfolk and farmers complain to the Council about the problems caused by the growing number of “the poor.”  The Council responds by increasing the number of City Guards.

Tempers rise with the temperatures as spring turns into summer.  Fights break out with increasing frequency.  One sultry evening, as Daino and Sheppard and Gavvy make their way down a crowded street, someone gets shoved.  Someone else starts shouting, and then everyone’s shouting, pushing, striking out at whatever they can hit because the real target of their anger is forever beyond their reach.

Gavvy is, of course, in the middle of it.  Daino’s trying to pull him back, Sheppard’s trying to get between his friends and whoever might attack them.  There’s a flash – someone’s pulled a knife, which means other people pull out knives or broken bottle shards, pick up stones from the ground, whatever’s to hand.

The Guard shows up eventually, Daino gets them out of there just in time, him and Sheppard half-dragging Gavvy.  They’ve all got bruises, cuts, some pretty bad.  But Gavvy, Gavvy can hardly keep his feet, Gavvy’s got a red, wet blotch on his shirt that won’t stop spreading.  Sheppard hasn’t even got a goddamn first-aid kit, let alone an infirmary or a doctor.  He and Daino do what they can.  Gavvy dies that night.

That’s how Gavvy left them.

***

_When John was 12, he heard a story on the news about some gay guy who was taking his high school to court because they wouldn’t let him bring his boyfriend to the prom.  The high school principal said that if the two guys went to the prom together, they’d probably get beaten up._

_That seemed pretty likely to John.  He couldn’t imagine taking a risk like that just to take a guy to a dance.  Then again, he couldn’t imagine taking a risk like that just to take a girl to a dance either._

_***_

_When John was 15, the aunts corralled him at a family reunion and asked if he had a girlfriend.  He said no.  They teased him a bit and let him go._

_They didn’t ask him about boyfriends.  He didn’t tell them about making out with Bill Hinsman in Bill’s room while his parents were out.  Bill wasn’t his boyfriend anyway._

_***_

_When John was 18, he and Bill Hinsman went to the prom.  They double-dated with Clarice (John’s date) and Maggie (Bill’s date).  The girls’ parents were really pleased that John and Bill were responsible about getting them home at a reasonable hour.  After they dropped the girls off, John and Bill bought some beer and drove out of town to a place they knew.  They spent the rest of the night drinking and making out._

_John and Bill hung out together a lot that summer.  They never talked about the fact that they were going to different universities in the fall.  And after that summer, they just never happened to see each other again._

*** 

Daino and Sheppard get several more days’ work out of the building-shaped hole.  It’s hardly the worst job they’ve ever had.  The worst job, they both agree, was the one that involved digging muck out of slimy tunnels too low to stand up in and then crawling back up the tunnels to the surface while dragging the muck-filled buckets.  Typically, they were never told why they were doing this.  Sheppard suspects that the tunnels may have been sewers for some of the better neighbourhoods – not that he lets himself think too much about it.  The part of the City where the day labourers’ dormitories stand doesn’t have sewers, of course.  The gutters of the streets serve the purpose.

Sheppard knows how to fly – planes, helicopters, jumpers – but what good is that here?  He knows how to shoot various types of guns, but not how to use a sword or a bow.  He’s got a master’s in aeronautical engineering, but he’s not trained as a mason or a carpenter or anything else useful.  Hell, he’s not even _literate_ by local standards – he can’t read or write the characters used here.  Neither can Daino, nor most of the day labourers, but it bothers Sheppard in a way it doesn’t bother the rest of them.  For Sheppard, it’s a new experience being expected to be nothing more than muscle and bone controlled by a brain just bright enough to follow simple orders.

Sheppard tries to hide his simmering resentment, but he knows that it shows through.  He knows it costs him work, which means it costs Daino too because Daino won’t leave him.  He watches how the other day labourers stand when the crew bosses are around, tries to imitate them, never seems to pull it off convincingly.  He’s too smart, but not smart enough to figure out how to look stupid.

Rodney talks a lot in Sheppard’s head these days.  He says all the things that Sheppard can’t let himself even think because they’ll make him too angry and he has nothing to do with the anger, no place for it to go.  Instead of thinking, he listens to Rodney’s endless bitching.  About the mindless work, about the filthy living conditions, about the swill that passes for food.  About the fact that Sheppard hasn’t got one sweet clue where he is relative to Atlantis – “and isn’t that just typical of your sense of direction!”

Rodney’s bitching is familiar and comforting and even kind of amusing.  Somehow it makes everything just a bit easier to deal with.

Sheppard listens to the genius in his head, tries to be smart and look stupid.

***

_John had already been in the Air Force for some years when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was enacted.  He didn’t have a problem with it.  Sure, when he had a chance he liked going off-base and hooking up with guys in bars.  And sure, some of those guys might be gay.  But most of them, John thought, were just guys who liked having sex with other guys once in a while – it wasn’t their whole life, just like it wasn’t John’s whole life._

_What he did on his own time was his own business.  Nothing wrong with it, but nothing he wanted to tell anyone about.  After all, he didn’t spend a lot of time _telling_ people when he went to bars with some of the guys from the base to pick up women.  John just wasn’t the type who talked about that kind of stuff._

_He knew there were guys in the military who really _were_ gay.  Hell, he knew at least one guy who actually had a steady boyfriend.  He could see how DADT wouldn’t be great for guys like that, but at least it was an improvement over the old policy.  Guys like that, they’d just have to be smart and careful and they’d be fine. _ 

***  

Despite constant physical exhaustion, Sheppard has never slept easily in Nieuyen.  In the hot, motionless air of the crowded dormitories, he lies tense and awake, listening to the other men snore, smelling their sweat and their farts.  Like them, Sheppard is surviving.  Unlike them, he can’t help feeling that he ought to be doing something more.  Trying to escape, maybe, if he had any idea where escape lay. 

He’s lost.  Probably not forgotten, but it’s been several months, so written off?  Is a strong possibility.  There’s nothing he can do about this except try to pretend to believe it’s not true.  Except wait – for an opening, a chance, a sign.  And survive until he gets one.

In the beginning, he tries to lull himself to sleep by remembering other times and places in which he’d felt secure, calm, peaceful.  This doesn’t work.  It just makes him angrier about the current situation.  What works, oddly enough, is remembering Rodney sleeping.

Rodney sleeps as single-mindedly as he does everything else.  He’ll stave off sleep with caffeine for as long as possible, he’ll resist until sheer exhaustion literally drops him on his ass, but once sleep claims him, his surrender is total.  He _sprawls_, completely relaxed as he never is when awake.  If you let him, he’ll take over the entire bed _and_ all the blankets.  While that ever-restless mind is off chasing unknown dreams, his face relaxes, his mouth loses its sarcastic slant.  Sometimes he even smiles.

Rodney, sleeping, looks both vulnerable and completely assured of his own safety.  And somehow, even though Sheppard can’t believe in anything for himself anymore, he finds that he can – has to – believe in Rodney’s continued safety.  It’s become Sheppard’s one remaining article of faith that somewhere in one of two galaxies, Rodney McKay sleeps, sprawled in a tangle of blankets, vulnerable and safe.

Believing this, remembering Rodney amidst that tangle, Sheppard can finally sleep as well.  

***

The end of the summer brings the beginning of the harvest season, which means that more of the day labourers get pulled off construction and maintenance.  Instead, they’re sent out to work in the fields on the outskirts of the City.  They spend endless hours stooped over rows of maturing vegetables, picking the seedpods on this one, the flowerheads on that one, pulling this other one up by the roots. 

None of the vegetables are familiar to Sheppard, although he soon grows to hate one particular plant with purplish-red fruits that have to be handled carefully to avoid bruising.  The problem is the sharp, intensely _green_ smell of the broken stems.  In the hot sunlight, it’s so intense as to be choking.  Even after the labourers are carted back inside the City each evening, the smell clings to their hands and clothes, defying all attempts to scrub it off.

Still, at least the vegetables make a difference from digging holes or mucking out sewers.  And one of the ways in which the job is different is: women.  Women can’t haul loads as heavy as the men’s, but their deft, quick hands give them an advantage at picking and handling crops.  This is the first time that Sheppard and Daino have been on crews that work alongside women’s crews.  To judge from the other men’s reactions, it’s been a while for them as well.

Yeah, sure, the day labourers’ neighbourhood in the City is no monastery.  If a man’s still got the energy after a day of hard labour and barely sufficient food, if he’s got the coins to hire a prostitute or the sheer luck to find someone who’s desperate or crazy or foolish enough to take him for free – yeah, it happens.  Needless to say, it never happens to anyone as often as they claim they’d like it to.

But this is different.  The women’s work crews are right there, _all day_.  The crew bosses keep a sharp eye out, but glances are traded, smiles follow.  Arrangements are made through a code that involves gestures, whistled snatches of popular songs with meaningful lyrics, whispers stolen in moments when two people pass each other in the vegetable rows on their way to exchange full baskets for empty ones.

“Sheppar’, look at that one there!  She’s looking at you!” Daino urges.  Sheppard glances over.  The woman – slim, dark, pretty despite her worn face – grins, meets his eyes for half a moment, looks away.  It’s a kind of dance, one that Sheppard knows how to do when he wants to.  He returns his attention to the vegetables.

“Sheppar’, she’s looking again!”

“Maybe she’s looking at _you_.”

“Ah, no such luck.  But maybe she’s got a friend, you know?”

“What, you’re trying to set us up to double-date?”

Inside Sheppard’s head, Rodney’s voice makes snide remarks about Captain Kirk.  If Daino wonders why Sheppard’s almost smiling, he probably thinks it’s because of the woman’s attention.

***

_Nancy was smart and pretty and fun.  She didn’t seem to spend a lot of time worrying about the future.  She_ _didn’t seem to expect John to have a lot of detailed plans for it.  John liked that.  He liked spending time with Nancy, and the sex wasn’t too bad either._

_John went to one of her family reunions.  She introduced him to her aunts, who asked all the usual sorts of aunt-like questions.  That’s when John found out that the reason Nancy didn’t worry about the future was that she already had it all planned out.  Apparently she and John were getting married the following year and yes, they were planning on children, although not right away due to John’s career._

_It wasn’t like when someone was angry and yelling at him and he could tell them to fuck off.  It wasn’t even like having his CO yelling at him, because then he could at least_ think_, “Fuck you, sir,” even if the words had to sound like, “Yes, sir,” when they came out of his mouth._

_Nancy was smiling and laughing, her aunts were smiling and laughing, no one was angry.  There just wasn’t anything in the situation that left an opening for John to jerk his arm out from underneath Nancy’s and run like hell, so he nodded and smiled instead.  Inside, he felt kind of betrayed.  It had never occurred to him to _ask_ Nancy about her plans, but shouldn’t she have _told_ him anyway?_

_By the next year, John still hadn’t come up with the words to explain all this to Nancy, so they got married.  To John’s relief, they got divorced before they got around to having children._

***            

Later, Sheppard will look back on the harvest season as the closest thing he’s had to a good time since his capture.  Picking fruit in the orchards is better than the vegetables.  Following the scythes to bundle the grain and carry it to the threshing floor is sweaty, itchy work, but still not too bad.

But after the harvest, the weather turns cold and the rains come.  There’s not much construction going on, not much work for the day labourers at all.  The crew bosses can afford to be picky, and they don’t like Sheppard.  Too many days he and Daino are left standing in the plaza.

Finally Sheppard convinces Daino that they should split up, stand apart from each other while the crew bosses are making their picks.  “It’s no use both of us going idle.  And I’ll hang out in the Market, see if I can pick up anything there.”  That’s highly unlikely and they both know it, but Daino agrees. 

What Daino earns isn’t enough to provide for them both.  He and Sheppard argue every evening about dividing it up.  Sheppard knows that if he doesn’t let Daino win the arguments, then the next day Daino will refuse to leave his side in the plaza and _neither_ of them is likely to get hired.  It’s a lose/lose situation.

He’s even hungrier than he was before and being idle makes it worse.  He has nothing to do but stand around, keeping one eye open for chances to earn a coin or two, the other eye open for any City Guards who might decide it’s time for Sheppard to move on.

Sheppard’s in the Market one day, doing his usual nothing to the usual rhythm of Rodney’s bitching, when he realizes he’s watching – staring at – the goat cheese woman.  The goat cheese woman is old, her herd of goats small, her supply of stock limited.  The more prosperous vendors have stalls closer in to the centre of the Market, where a thief would have a harder time making a getaway.  The more prosperous vendors can afford to have a couple of extra bodies – family members or hired help – to hang around their stalls and keep a lookout.  But the goat cheese woman has only the boy (a grandson?) who tends her goats during the day while she’s at the Market.  She and her cheeses sit at the vulnerable edge of the crowd.

Sheppard’s counting steps and seconds in his mind before he catches up with himself.  So many steps from where he’s sitting to the pile of cheeses, so many seconds to grab one when the old woman’s attention is elsewhere, so many seconds to make a run for the nearest alleyway...

“Oh, god, what are you thinking?” shrieks Rodney in Sheppard’s mind.  Sheppard hasn’t got an answer, so he stands up and walks away, away from the Market.  He spends the rest of the day walking, up and down streets he doesn’t even see, anything to keep moving.

When dark comes, he’s in a part of the City he doesn’t know, one of those odd borderline neighbourhoods where respectable folk don’t live but make frequent forays to rub elbows with prostitutes and pickpockets, street hawkers and beggars.  Sheppard’s lost and knows it even without Rodney’s ranting.  He’s trying to find someone who might actually respond to a request for directions when he accidentally makes eye contact with an older man, fairly well dressed.  The man smiles, looks Sheppard up and down, nods.  “One krallonar,” he says confidently.

“What?”

“To suck me.  You’re rough-looking, but I like your mouth.”

“Fuck off,” spits Sheppard, and gets out of there, hearing the man laugh behind him.

It’s past midnight when he finally makes it back to the dormitory neighbourhood.  Daino is frantic.  Sheppard tells Daino he got a bit lost.

“You’re even more lost than you think you are,” says Rodney’s voice in Sheppard’s head.

***

_John sometimes wished Rodney had been at that family reunion of Nancy’s.  Rodney always had plenty of words.  He would have yanked John away from Nancy and explained to her and her aunts why she shouldn’t have made plans for John without informing John.  Then John and Rodney could have gone somewhere else to drink beer and watch DVDs and play video golf and have sex._

_Unlike Nancy, Rodney worried pretty much all the time, but only about stuff worth worrying about, like the Pegasus galaxy’s next try at killing them.  He certainly had plans, many involving John, but these plans were about protecting them, their team, their people and their city.  So that was okay.  _

_Rodney wasn’t just smart, he was a genius, and while he wasn’t exactly pretty, somehow John’s eyes felt good resting on him.  Spending time with him was sometimes fun, sometimes terrifying, sometimes (not so often) relaxing and always interesting._

_Being with Rodney made John realize that although the off-base bars had been fun, he’d been missing something without knowing it.  Back when he and Bill had been teenagers, they’d hung out together, done stuff together besides sex.  He and Rodney, they worked and fought alongside each other, depended on each other to survive.  When Pegasus gave them a chance, they relaxed and blew off steam together.  _

_Sometimes sex was part of the fun, sometimes it was part of surviving.  Sometimes you needed to touch and be touched by another hot, sweaty human body.  And while it wasn’t absolutely necessary, it was better, it was so much better, if that body belonged to someone you gave a damn about, someone you trusted to give a damn about you.     _

_Maybe other people had a word for all of that.  John didn’t know and didn’t care.  Whatever this was called, he and Rodney had it, and it was good._

_Until DADT was repealed._

***

They can’t go on this way forever, Sheppard and Daino.  When the end comes, Sheppard finds that he’s been it expecting it all along.  The details of exactly _how_ are almost incidental.

There’s an evening he waits for Daino, but Daino never shows up.  Eventually, other men come, men who’ve worked with them, shared space in dormitories with them from time to time.  There was a load being hoisted by pulley, too heavy, improperly balanced.  There was a rope, worn and beginning to fray.  There was Daino, in the wrong place at the wrong moment.  He was struck in the head, knocked unconscious.  Not much blood, still breathing, so the other labourers laid him aside in what shelter they could find, hoped he might come to.

By the end of the day, Daino was dead.  “He never woke up,” they told Sheppard, “He didn’t suffer.”

“Concussion.” says Rodney’s voice.  “Brain injury.  If Beckett had been here, if Keller or Biro or any of those witch doctors had been here to work their voodoo, damnitall, that man wasn’t dead until these morons let him die!”

Sheppard doesn’t argue with him.  Rodney’s probably right.  Sheppard thinks he should probably feel something, grief or despair or _something_.  What he mostly feels is tired. 

***

_“Tell whom?”_

_“Well, people.  Our friends.  And people who should know just in case.  Keller!  And Woolsey.  Teyla and Ronon, of course.  And Radek, probably Lorne?”_

_“Whoa, we’d tell _Lorne_?”_

_“We _can_ now, it’s not a problem, don’t you get that?  We can tell people without you getting discharged or sent back to Earth or any of that crap!”_

_“Buddy, there’s a difference between being able to tell people and actually going ahead and telling them.”_

_“Why?  Look, most of them know already.”_

_“Then why do we have to tell them?”_

_“Is there something you’re not telling _me_?  Ohmigod, your divorce was never finalized, is that it?”_

_“What?  Sure it was, years ago.  What does that have to do with anything?  Rodney, tell me one positive benefit that would result from telling anyone we have sex together.”_

_Rodney, who’d been pacing up and down John’s quarters waving his hands around, went completely still.  “Is that how you’d put it?”_

_“If it were _me_, I wouldn’t ‘put it’ anyway at all.  What would _you_ tell them?  That you’re my ‘boyfriend’?  That we’re ‘in love’?  That we have plans to get married?”_

_“I... guess not, seeing that none of those statements appears to be true.  Okay, I get it, you don’t like talking about relationships.  So let’s take it slowly, break it to them in small steps.  First you tell them you’re gay...”_

_“I am not gay!”_

_“Or bi or whatever.”_

_“I’m not bi either.”_

_“You’re trying to tell me you’re completely straight?  That _wasn’t_ you moaning while I fucked you last night?  Excuse me for being just a _bit_ confused!”_

_“See?  This is exactly why I don’t want to tell people, it gets everything all confused.  What we do together is between you and me, Rodney.  It’s _ours_.  It doesn’t belong to other people.  I thought you understood that.”_

_“John?  John, look at me.  I understand.  I’m not proposing to stand on a table in the mess hall and yell out the details of our sex life.  I just think it would be nice to be able to _kiss_ you in the mess hall...”_

_“That’s what I mean!”_

_“I said kiss, not make out!  Look, it’s just...  I’m proud and happy to be with you, and yes, I do want to share that with people who know us.”_

_“People already know we’re friends.  And team-mates.  And that we’ve got each other’s backs, always.  But you think sex is more important than any of that.”_

_“God, John, you make it sound as if I’m some kind of satyromaniac!  It’s not about the sex!  There’s a lot more between us than...  Oh.  Is there?  There isn’t, that’s what you’re saying.  You’re saying there’s what people already know and there’s the sex and there’s nothing else, that’s exactly what you’re saying, and all along I thought, I thought, okay, I was wrong.  Again.  I’m going to be sick, I’m leaving now – did you hear me?  Get out of my way!”_

_“Buddy, just calm down...”_

_“_Don’t_ call me Buddy, _let go_ of my arm and _get out of my way_!  And if you lock that door before I’m on the other side of it then none of the Marines will have power in their quarters for a _week_ and _you_ will be the one explaining _why_!”_

_John got out of the way and watched Rodney leave.  It was like Nancy’s reunion all over again.  Apparently Rodney had started making contingency plans for the repeal of DADT some time ago.  And even though those plans involved John, he’d never told John about them, just assumed that John would go along._

_Where did Rodney get off acting as if he was the one who’d been betrayed?_

***               

Daino’s death simplifies things.  Sheppard doesn’t have to pretend to try anymore.  He still goes to the plaza, most days anyway.  Sometimes he even gets hired.  Usually not.

He can’t afford to sleep in a dormitory, so he sleeps on the streets, tucked into whatever space he can find – into doorways, behind pillars, wherever.  There’s competition for the best spaces, and it’s rare for a night to go by without the Guards coming along to kick people awake, move them on.

The nights are getting colder now.  Sheppard wonders if they’ll get cold enough that he’ll freeze to death in his sleep.  He’s heard that an easy way to go.

On the days he doesn’t get hired, he finds himself back at the Market, watching the goat cheese woman, watching the other vendors who can’t afford better spots than those along the edge.  He’s hungry, the food is there.  He knows it’s only a matter of time.

“What, that’s your idea of a plan, stealing from old women?” sneers Rodney, “If these people had invented refined sugar yet, you’d be stealing candy from babies too.  Come on, you can do better than that.  Everything’s relative, you know.”

Sheppard thinks if that’s supposed to be some kind of physics joke, it’s pretty lame.  Then he thinks of something else.  Yeah, everything’s relative.  He finds a pump, cleans up himself and his clothes as much as possible (not much).  That evening, he goes back to the borderline neighbourhood where he got lost.  He _looks_ at the other men on the street, the well-dressed ones.  He smiles a little when they look back.

By the end of the night, he’s got four krallonar.  It’s more than he’s ever earned from a day’s work in Nieuyen before. 

“Beginner’s luck, dear,” one of the prostitutes tells him, not unkindly.  “They like a new face.”

***

He doesn’t go back the next night, or the night after.  But he doesn’t get any work during the days either.  Even sleeping on the streets, he runs out of money and he’s hungry again.  There aren’t really any other options, so he takes the one he’s got.  The next day one of the coins he’s earned buys him a new used shirt in the Market.  He wears the shirt that evening.  The woman who told him he had beginner’s luck gives his business investment an approving nod.

After that, he goes back pretty much every night, which means that he’s rarely at the plaza for the pre-dawn hiring.  It hardly matters.  If the only thing he’s supposed to do is to survive, well, he’s surviving.  Some nights are better than others, but he usually earns _something_, even on slow nights when he spends most of his time listening to Rodney. 

Business is weather-dependent, of course.  Which means that the night it’s pissing rain, Sheppard finds himself standing at the mouth of an alley at midnight, not one customer yet and no likelihood of any.  Even some of the other prostitutes – huh, when did he start thinking of them as the _other_ prostitutes? – have packed it in and gone wherever they have to go.

Sheppard’s trying to figure out if _he_ has anyplace else to go when a man comes staggering down the street, obviously drunk, also all too obviously well off.  How he’s made it this far without anyone rolling him is a mystery.  His luck comes to an end when he passes out, literally at Sheppard’s feet.

“If I don’t do this, someone else will,” thinks Sheppard.  And he finds that’s enough.  It’s enough to let himself drag the man back into the alley, enough to help himself to the contents in the man’s wallet.  He leaves the wallet itself, it’s embroidered and might be recognized.  He takes the fistful of coins and gets out of there, walking and walking and walking in the night until his legs are shaking with exhaustion, until he has to sit down for a moment in a doorway and then falls asleep sitting there. 

Sheppard’s luck holds – no one stabs him in his sleep.  He wakes up the next morning in the doorway and life, such as it is, goes on.  The sarcastic comments inside his head do not.  Rodney has finally fallen silent.  That makes Sheppard feel a bit lonely, but he can still find comfort in thoughts of Rodney sleeping, safe.  He’s still got that much.

One night much like any other, Sheppard is working his usual territory.  He makes eye contact with a potential customer, saunters over.  “Five krallonar to fuck you,” says the man,

Sheppard raises an eyebrow.  “Make it ten.”

“Eight, and only if it’s good.”

Sheppard smiles.  “It will be.”

***

_John didn’t sleep well after the argument with Rodney, not that night or the next several nights.  He’d gotten used to falling asleep in Rodney’s bed, wrapped around a relaxed, sweaty Rodney.  Rodney rarely woke when John slipped out of bed in the wee hours, so John got to enjoy the sight of him, safe and quiet and, John liked to think, still smelling a bit like John.  John would savour his chance to just look and then he’d head back to his own quarters to wash off the sex smell before going running with Ronon.  After all, washing in Rodney’s quarters might wake Rodney up.  No point to that when John needed to leave early to get in his run. _

_Now these quiet moments were lost.  Hell, it _wasn’t_ all about the sex, didn’t Rodney get that?  There was this other _thing_ that they didn’t have to name because they never discussed it, except that now Rodney wanted to tell other people about it, destroy it with words.  In the face of that threat, what had seemed solid and strong became a lot more fragile._

_John gave Rodney a week to calm down, think things over.  The man was a genius, he’d figure it out, right?  It was all a stupid misunderstanding._

_So when he judged the time to be right, John showed up at Rodney’s quarters with some really good beer and a new DVD.  And yes!  Rodney apologized.  John apologized too.  And then they both apologized some more, very thoroughly, in as many different ways as they could think of – which was quite a lot of different ways – and by the time they got done with that, well, so much for watching the DVD.  John left it behind when he slipped out in the wee hours, smiling._

_After that everything was fine, it was great, it was just like before.  Right up until the evening that Rodney said, “I can’t do this anymore.”_

_John froze, handful of popcorn and all._

_“Ironic, isn’t it?  All the years I’ve been bitching about your country’s moronic military policies, and now that they’ve changed we find out we’ve really been misunderstanding each other all along.  I thought you were scared of losing your command and your career.  Now it turns out that you’re scared of... Do you even know what it is?”_

_“I’m not scared, Rodney.”_

_“That would be a ‘no,’ then.  Embarrassment, I guess.  Other people wondering why you couldn’t do better, except I never realized that other people’s opinions mattered so much to you.”_

_“They don’t.  And I’m not scared, Rodney.”_

_But that was a lie, because he was scared of losing what they had, and after all this time Rodney knew him well enough to read his face, the way he held his body._

_“You’re lying, John.  I wish I knew why.  And don’t tell me you’re ‘scared of commitment.’  You’re the military commander of this city, that’s not a commitment?  I thought, if anything, I might be helping make it – not easy, but less hard for you.  Giving you, I don’t know, some respite?  John, I never meant to make it harder.”_

_“Rodney.  Buddy.  I don’t understand what you’re trying to tell me.”_

_Rodney took a deep breath.  “I’ll put it in simple words.  Take the popcorn and the DVD and leave.  Don’t ever come by my quarters again.  If you need to talk to me about something work-related, radio me and we’ll meet in my lab or your office.  I’ve got a few ideas for who should replace me on the team –“_

_“Rodney, you don’t have to –“_

_“Yes, I do.  If we’d never started this, well, but we did.  And now I can’t.  I’ll send you the list.  Now go away.  Please, John.  Go away.”_

***

By the time Sheppard hears Rodney’s voice again, it’s been so long that he needs a moment before what he’s hearing sinks in.  It’s still early in the evening, but darkness comes early this time of year and so do the customers.  Sheppard’s slouching against a wall when:

“...streets doubling as sewers... germs... typhoid, cholera... Tchaikovsky...”

“Welcome back,” Sheppard thinks at the voice in his head.  He means it too – he’s missed the company.

“...disinfect everything we’re wearing when we get back... _three times_... better yet, just throw it all out...”

Wait a moment.  Wait just a goddamn moment.  That last bit almost sounded as if the voice were getting closer, but how can it get closer when it’s already in his head?  And wasn’t there just a bit of an echo off the surrounding buildings?

There are other people on the street, but Sheppard has to strain his eyes for details in the dusk.

A blue flash.  A deep, growled, “McKay!”  And shoving forward, staring so intently at the bastard child of a life signs detector and an Ancient... laser cat toy maybe?... that he trips over a misaligned paving stone and _almost_ faceplants in the muck before Sheppard grabs his shoulder and rescues him: Rodney McKay.  As large and solid and warm as life.

Ronon’s even larger, just as solid and warm.  John Sheppard can finally go home.

***

It’s not that easy, of course.  Getting out of the City, locating the cloaked jumper, the ride to the orbital Gate – that’s all easy.  Back in Atlantis, Sheppard makes a brief verbal report to Woolsey, promises a longer written one later. 

Keller’s next – examinations, tests, questions.  He asks if the tests include STDs.  She says they do and doesn’t ask why he asked.  He’s grateful.

He submits to the inevitable and promises to see Dr. Azad three times a week.  No one makes him promise he’s actually going to tell the psychologist anything.

Mostly Sheppard works at catching up, reading through mission reports, getting up to speed on ongoing situations with Lorne.

“It’s good to have you back, sir.”  Lorne’s been the acting military commander for almost a year.  Like everyone else in Atlantis, he assumes that these responsibilities will now shift back to Sheppard.

“You decided you didn’t want the job permanently?”

“Dr. McKay would have had something to say about that, sir.”

Lorne knows that Sheppard knows that if it weren’t for McKay, the SGC would have reassigned the command by now.  And it wouldn’t have mattered, because if it weren’t for McKay, Sheppard wouldn’t be here to care.  For almost a year, McKay bullied, pleaded, threatened and bargained to keep the higher-ups from writing Sheppard off. 

The night Sheppard was captured, Dr. Salgado, the geologist who’d been sharing the room with him, had been killed.  Teyla and Ronon were pinned down by their own assailants.  By the time they fought free, Sheppard and his captors were gone.

The trail of rumour and supposition that led on from that night was always tenuous at best.  At times it appeared to run completely cold.  No one on Earth could have kept Teyla and Ronon from using their own skills and knowledge to attempt to follow it to the end.  But it was McKay, with Lorne’s and Woolsey’s quiet backing, who stubbornly refused to stop contributing Atlantis’ resources to the task. 

Scientists on away missions had tacit orders to ask certain questions, look for certain signs.  The military members of the teams never seemed to notice this behaviour.  No one mentioned gaps in the Gate use logs or the occasional unlogged temporary disappearance of jumpers and of weapons from the armoury.  If odds and ends of technology and trade goods disappeared more permanently, no one suggested that they were perhaps being used for bribes. 

Dr. Keller was heard to comment frequently and approvingly on Dr. McKay’s improved diligence in making use of his accumulated personal leave time.  No one commented at all on any possible connection between McKay’s leave days and unlogged jumper usage.  Sateda and Athos acquired a surprising number of days of religious observance.  Woolsey urged everyone to remember the need for cultural sensitivity. 

***

In the end, the story was simple enough.  There were people who wanted Sheppard badly enough to put a price on his head.  There were other people who were tempted, whether from greed or desperation or both.  There was a plan, a chain of transfer in which each party knew only their immediate contacts.

When something went wrong and the chain was broken, Sheppard’s current holders found themselves stuck with a hot potato: a high-profile prisoner who’d attract the wrong kind of notice if they kept him too long.  They decided to cut their losses.  Too greedy to simply kill Sheppard and dispose of the body, they sold him instead, not to the pre-arranged buyers for the price they’d been promised, but to a general slave trader for what one might get for any healthy middle-aged male slave without particular skills.

Here the trail of information ended, because slavery wasn’t uncommon in the Pegasus galaxy, and who remembers one slave out of so many others?  But science is a game of observation, hypotheses and testing.  McKay’s hypothesis was that Sheppard, in better condition than most slaves, might find a buyer fairly quickly.  A search for the major slave market closest to Sheppard’s last known position led to the western region of the northern continent on M8J-157. 

The area was intimidatingly well-populated.  McKay muttered about needles and haystacks, formulated a second hypothesis.  Sheppard, being Sheppard, would presumably be trying to escape and might well be successful.  And according to all the local informants, when slaves escaped or were freed in any of the kingdoms, princedoms, grand duchies, duchies, margravates or electorates surrounding the independent City-State of Nieuyen, the City was where they usually ended up.

So McKay mated a life signs detector with a bit of Ancient tech of unknown purpose that had previously responded _only_ to Sheppard and produced a device which – hopefully – would light up when brought within 20 metres of the man.  Or, presumably, anyone with an ATA gene of similar strength.

Without Sheppard himself, there was no way to test the thing.  There was no guarantee that Sheppard was actually in Nieuyen.  The calculation of Sheppardian probability density simply indicated that Nieuyen was the best place to start looking. 

“It’s like when someone falls into a fast river,” suggested Ronon.  “You go downstream and check the spots where the body’s most likely to wash up.”

“Shut up, Chewie,” snapped McKay.

“What?  It’s more like that than your needle and haystack thing.”

It was the third trip to Nieuyen, Ronon and McKay’s turn this time to spend a long day walking the City’s streets.  When they could find people who seemed likely to know – _and_ who would agree to answer their questions – they asked about an escaped slave, dark-haired, taller than most, on the skinny side.  It wasn’t a highly specific description.

As they trudged back towards the City gates in the growing darkness, McKay was wearily aware that they’d soon have to double back along their chain of hypotheses, start testing another branch.  He didn’t want to think about what would happen when they ran out of branches.  He _tried_ telling himself he could personally ensure they didn’t run out, but he’d never been any good at lying.

And then, a blue flash.

***

Sheppard’s read the official report McKay submitted to Woolsey.  Teyla, Ronon, Lorne, they’ve all given him additional details, unofficial and unsolicited.  McKay has not. 

The warm hug in the street in Nieuyen seems to have been a fluke.  Once they made it back to Atlantis, McKay went back to treating Sheppard the way he’d treated him for months before his capture.  McKay’s polite in staff meetings, doesn’t deal with Sheppard in any unofficial capacity.  Sheppard doesn’t push it.  He figures he owes McKay at least that much.

He owes Dr. Azad nothing.  He just shows up in the guy’s office three times a week and not-answers questions not too obviously.  Azad’s no fool.  At the end of the fourth session, he eyes Sheppard narrowly.

“Tell me, Colonel.  If one of your men attempted to conceal an injury which would affect his performance in combat, how would you deal with the situation?”

Sheppard shrugs.  “I suppose that depends on the details.”  It’s a standard evasive maneuver and he knows Azad knows it.

“You don’t want to talk to me, Colonel.  Well and good.  But you need to talk to someone.  I leave it to your own sense of responsibility to find the time, the place and the person.  Until that happens, you’re putting everyone who depends on you at risk.”

“Leaving it to me – does that mean you’re clearing me to return to duty?”

“Nice try, Colonel.  Not completely, not yet.”

Sheppard shrugs again.  He didn’t expect it.  He knows other people have their own expectations.  Other people are still _expecting_ Lt. Colonel John Sheppard, USAF, military commander of Atlantis.  He wonders how long they’ll keep looking.  He wonders if Azad has already figured him out.

***

With Sheppard still on limited duty and the scientist spot on the team unfilled, Ronon and Teyla go out with other teams, run combat classes when they’re in Atlantis.  Sheppard spars with them, goes for runs with Ronon.  They usually eat together in the mess, sometimes talking about this and that.  They’ve never talked about Rodney’s continued absence and they don’t start now.

Teyla feints one way, moves another.  Sheppard hits the mat for the far too many-eth time that session.

“Ow!  Okay, sloppy move on my part.”

“Yes, it was.”  Teyla’s studying him.  “You are... not yourself today, John.  You have not been yourself recently.”

Sheppard starts to freeze, catches himself, but Teyla knows him too well and is paying too much attention.

“Am I using the idiom correctly?  To not be oneself?”

“Uh, yes.  You’re using it correctly.  I mean, your phrasing is correct.”

“But my observation is not?”

Sheppard finds a bottle of water, takes a long drink, playing for time.  He owes Teyla almost as much as he owes McKay.

“Dr. Azad told me to find someone to talk to.  He’s leaving the choice up to my ‘sense of responsibility.’  Maybe you should tell him I’m not myself.”  He resists the urge to slouch at Teyla, give her a smirk and a raised eyebrow.  That might work with some other people, but Teyla will see right through it.

“You should talk to Ronon.”

“Ronon.”  Right, there’s the first guy who comes to mind when you think about talking.

“He was in the army on Sateda, then he was a Runner, now he is part of your team on Atlantis.  He knows what it is like to no longer be oneself and to have to become another.”

Did she say “oneself” or “one self”?  Somehow, it feels as if asking her would give too much away. 

“Okay, I’ll talk to Ronon.  Thanks, Teyla.”

***

Three miles out from the city, taking a water break on their morning run, Sheppard tries and fails to find an un-awkward way to start the conversation with Ronon.  “So, uh, when you were a Runner...”

He pauses.  Almost anyone from Earth would pick up the conversational ball and run with it.  McKay would have torn the ball apart and invented a new, improved version by now.  Ronon simply waits, watching.  Finally the big man relents.  “Teyla?”

“Yeah.”  Sheppard figured she’d tell Ronon.  That’s why he’s trying to get this over with instead of just avoiding it altogether.  “She says I haven’t been myself recently.”

Ronon snorts.  “_Someone_ survived.”

Sheppard thinks about that.  “Yeah, someone did.”

“Why?”

“Why did I survive?”

“Yeah.”

“I guess I did what I had to do.  Made choices.”

“That’s how, not why.”

When did Ronon become a grammarian?  “You wanna explain that?”

“One of the Marines, she has a poster in her quarters.  It says when you come to the end of your rope, you should tie a knot and hang on.”

“If McKay were here, he’d give you a lecture about the evils of pop psychology.”

“You gonna?”

“Nah, I’m just wondering what you were doing in _her_ quarters.”

Ronon grins.  “I was invited.”

“I wasn’t saying you weren’t.”  Another swig of water.  “Okay, I’ll bite.  Why are you telling me this?”

“Knowing how to survive, that’s a rope.  But you still need a knot to hang on to.  Some people, they hope they’ll get back what they lost.”  Ronon shrugs.  Sheppard knows the Satedan has never had that hope.  “Some people, it’s revenge.  Revenge’ll keep you going awhile.  Not forever.”  Another shrug.

That’s a lot of words for Ronon – and more than enough for Sheppard to digest.  “Okay.  Uh, thanks.  We should head back.  I’ve got a senior staff meeting.”

“Don’t tell McKay about the poster.  I already listen to him talk enough.”

***

The thing is, even though McKay doesn’t spend time with Sheppard anymore, he still spends time with Teyla and Ronon.  Sheppard’s reminded of this one evening when he gets to the mess for dinner later than usual.  Ronon and Teyla are already there, and McKay’s sitting with them.

Sheppard hesitates, not wanting to chase McKay off, willing to sit elsewhere.  There’s plenty of seats.  But it’s too late, McKay’s seen him looking.  He glares at Sheppard, grabs his tray off the table, says something to the others and he’s gone.  He’s vanishing out the mess hall door even as Sheppard reaches the table.

Teyla gives Sheppard a level look.  She obviously thinks he should have handled this differently.  He wishes she’d give him details on _how_.  It was McKay’s choice to end, well, everything.  McKay’s been the one making the choices all along.

Sheppard remembers grabbing McKay’s solid shoulder on a dark, muddy street in Nieuyen.  He wishes he could have grabbed McKay’s shoulder just now, can imagine the feel of cloth-covered muscle under his fingertips.  But he’s trying to respect McKay’s choices, so he didn’t reach out.  Why doesn’t Teyla get that?

***

It happens a few more times.  Sheppard comes across McKay talking with Sheppard’s – with McKay’s _former_ – team-mates.  McKay sees him, glares and leaves.  It’s like something out of grade school.

Then McKay shows up in Sheppard’s office.  Or rather, the military commander’s office.  Lorne’s been working there for a year.  Objects have drifted away from the positions they held when it was Sheppard’s alone.  In fact, Lorne still works there as often as not, and Sheppard hasn’t made any move to change that.  But Lorne’s away on a mission for the day, Sheppard figures he can at least take care of some of the paperwork.  The irony of the change in roles doesn’t escape him.

He’s not expecting McKay to charge in, flushed and belligerent.  “Okay, I’m going to say this once.  You’re angry at me, I get that, I understand why.  I can’t change what happened, not to you, not to Salgado.  But I did everything I could to get you back, I _did_ get you back, and I think that should count for something.  And I couldn’t have done it without Teyla and Ronon and they’re my friends too and this isn’t grade school.  So, consider this to be my official apology for screwing up.  Now get over it.”

“Uh, McKay?  Why do you think I’m angry?” 

“Oh no, Sheppard, you don’t get to do that!  You’re forgetting I _know_ you, I know what you look like just before you start shooting.  You’ve been angry ever since you got back from M8J-157.”

Sheppard blinks.  “Okaaaaay.  Why do you think I’m angry _at you_?”

“For not being there.”

“When I was captured.”

“No, idiot, when you were restocking your hair gel.  Of course when you were captured!”

“And if you’d been there, you could have...”

“How should I know?!  I _wasn’t_ there!  And you obviously think I could have done _something_ or else why would you be angry at me?”

Later, Sheppard will think it might have been the circular logic that pushed him over the edge. 

“Fuck, McKay, not everything’s about you!  Maybe I’m just angry at _everything_, you ever think of that?  Maybe I spent months crawling through sewers and digging holes and being treated like shit that’s been stepped on.  Maybe I turned tricks to keep from starving because it was better than robbing old women, and then maybe I robbed someone once _anyway_ and maybe it was just a matter of time before I would have done it _again_, and then you and Ronon pull your heroic rescue act and I’m back here now and everyone sees Lt. Colonel Sheppard and no one here knows _shit_ about what that time was like!”

My god, he’s actually shut McKay up.  When Sheppard finally stops yelling long enough to draw breath, the other man watches him, quiet, a bit pale, waiting for potential aftershocks from the explosion before he speaks.

“Ronon does, but you already know that.  I don’t, but I read the report you submitted to Woolsey.  And unlike Woolsey, I’ve also read the reports you’ve submitted for missions I’ve actually been part of, so I know how much and what kind of information you leave out.”

McKay’s voice is uncharacteristically tentative, as if he’s offering something and isn’t sure how it will be received.  That makes Sheppard feel as if he ought to offer something back.

“McKay, if you’d been there, you would have been killed like Salgado or captured like me.  Even if you’d been captured, you can’t know if you’d have survived.   There were two guys I escaped with, we made it to the Cit... to Nieuyen together. You read the report, you know what happened.”

“Survivor’s guilt.  _And_ anger _and_ being dumped back into a high-visibility, high-pressure position after almost a year of being treated like less than a human being.”

“McKay, you trying to take Azad’s job away from him?”

McKay snorts.  It sounds only slightly forced.  “Sorry, Colonel, I already have _real_ work to do, far too much of it.  But...” again there’s that odd tentativeness, “you should try and let him help to the extent he can.  All of us would, uh, like to help.  To the extent we can.”

“Yeah, I know.  Thank you.”  And Sheppard means it.

***

Sheppard tells Azad that he talked to Teyla and Ronon and yelled at McKay.  Azad laughs, sounding human to Sheppard for the first time.  He more or less promised McKay he’d try and let the guy help, and he owes McKay.  And having to figure out how to put words around things once, whether with Teyla or Ronon or McKay, makes it just that bit easier to marshal the words a second time.  So as the thrice-weekly sessions continue, Sheppard finds himself telling Azad a few more things after all.

Lorne steadily reverse-delegates, shifting more and more of Sheppard’s job back onto Sheppard.  The office begins to assume a third configuration, resettling around Sheppard in a way that’s different from before his capture.

Then Lorne breaks his leg on a mission, a simple fracture due to an unfortunate interaction with a not-gopher hole.  This prompts Woolsey to check in with Azad, who agrees that Sheppard’s ready to return to full duty.  Which brings up the question of: Sheppard’s team.

Like the office, he and McKay have shifted into a new configuration, one in which they can share a table in the mess with mutual friends without quite being friends themselves.  It’s not particularly noticeable that they never address each other directly, that McKay’s focus is always on someone or something other than Sheppard.  Outwardly, their relationship is reasonably amicable.

Inwardly, Sheppard finds himself wanting to throw things at McKay, to reach out and grab the man’s arm, make him look, _get his goddamn attention_.  He won’t, of course, because that’s not what McKay wants, but John Sheppard’s got a sneaky streak wide enough that sometimes he outsneaks even himself.  When he braves the labs and Zelenka’s thoughtful gaze to ask McKay if he’d consider rejoining SGA-1, Sheppard’s honestly convinced he’s taking a reasonable course of action for purely professional reasons.

McKay, for his own reasons, accepts. 

***

The mission to PX6-391 is a milk run, a follow-up visit to a friendly agrarian people.  SGA-1’s only handling it because Teyla’s got personal friends here.  And tacitly also because Teyla and Lorne agreed that Sheppard should, as much as possible, ease back in. 

The villagers are eager to show the team how well their crops are doing, so everyone – including McKay, plastered with homemade sunscreen – tromps out to the fields where the harvest is in progress. 

As their guides chatter on about this year’s yields, next year’s plans, Sheppard begins to feel uneasy.  Nothing serious.  The edge of a headache starting to build, a twinge of queasiness in his guts, a slight not-quite dizziness.  There’s something about the hot, breathless sunlight and the motion of the harvesters as they work along the rows, stooping to pick, straightening to hoist their baskets.  There’s something else, not quite _there_ until one of the harvesters passes quite close by him and he catches a whiff of human sweat and a sharp, intensely green smell.

He barely has time to turn away before he’s doubled over, vomiting, continuing to dry heave helplessly after there’s nothing left.  He’s aware of motion around him, angry voices, soothing ones, but he can’t straighten, can’t catch his breath, can’t keep his feet and finally, blessedly, it all... just... goes... away.

***

Sheppard wakes up in a cool, dim place, lying on something soft indoors somewhere.  He can’t immediately identify the tapping noise, but its familiarity is comforting.  Someone’s taken off his boots, his tac vest... where’s his holster?  He tries to sit up, too fast, and finds he needs the strong arm that reaches to steady him.

“Wait, stop, lie back!  First you threw up, then you fainted, you’re not just going to leap back to your feet, Colonel.”

“I didn’t _faint_, McKay.”

“Fine, you passed out from manly sunstroke.  Here, have some water.”

The water is cool.  It eases his raw throat, makes his mouth taste less disgusting.  He makes another try at sitting up completely, but McKay’s not having it.

“Teyla and Ronon are taking care of our social obligations.  Teyla told our hosts that you’ve only recently returned to duty after being on medical leave, so instead of being insulted they’re flattered that you came and concerned for your health.”

“It’s called diplomacy, McKay.”

“Whatever.  In the meantime, all you and I have to do is _stay put_.  _I’m_ working on power projections on my laptop, _you_ are resting.  They even brought us food from the feast we’re missing – here, have some...  Oh, maybe not.  Okay, steady, steady there, here’s a bucket, I’ve got you...”

When it’s over, Sheppard feels cold and shaky.  He doesn’t object as McKay gets him more water, puts an arm around his shoulders for him to lean on, even holds the cup to his lips instead of letting him do so himself.  Lying down again after the drink feels good, except that he misses the warmth of McKay’s arm.

“Flashback?”

“Yeah.”

“You did some farm work when you were, uh, back there.”

“Yeah.”

“Was there anything in particular...”

“God, McKay, stop picking at me!”

“Sorry.”  And McKay does look sorry, sorry enough that Sheppard feels like an asshole.  _He’s_ the one who needs nursemaiding, McKay’s volunteered to do the job and instead of saying thanks, he’s yelling at the guy.  He tries to make it up to McKay with a little information, light stuff, harmless.

“Daino and I worked the harvest.  It was one of the better jobs we did.  Uh, Daino was...”

“I know.”

“Yeah, you read the report.  The harvest...  There were women working it too.  Daino was trying to get me to set us up to double-date.”

Sheppard’s pleased with himself when McKay grins.  “Okay, that sounds like you.”

“Hey, it was _his_ idea!  I kept thinking about you and your Kirk jokes.”

“And that _stopped_ you?”

“Nah, I wasn’t gonna anyway.  But it made me smile.”

The grin becomes something softer and warmer.  “I’m glad I could...  I’m glad you still had things that could make you smile.”

It’s almost like it used to be, once.  Sheppard feels empty and a bit light-headed.  McKay’s strong arm around him would keep him from floating off.  But McKay looks away.  “You should rest, Colonel.”

“Lie down with me.”  Where the hell did _that_ come from?  He had no idea he was going to say it until he hears the words.

“Sheppard, no.”  McKay’s already gone, away from the bed, across the room.

“I don’t mean it like that.  I mean...  I thought of you sleeping.  When I was in Nieuyen.  When I couldn’t remember what it felt like to be safe anymore, I could still remember you sleeping.  Sometimes you talked to me, bitched and complained and, and just sounded like _you_.  But mostly I thought of you sleeping.  In the mornings...”

“That’s enough.”  Cold, level, unyielding.  “You had a flashback, you threw up and passed out, you’re still shaky.  So that’s enough talking.  God, you _never_ talk and then you can’t _stop_.  You need to rest, I need to work on the power projections.”

McKay’s no diplomat.  There’s no room in his tone for negotiation, and Sheppard’s suddenly too tired to argue.  So he lies back, closes his eyes – and surprises himself by falling asleep to the tapping of McKay’s laptop keys.     

***

By the time Teyla and Ronon come to collect them, Sheppard’s feeling well enough to pilot the jumper.  He’s not surprised when it’s Teyla who sits up front with him.  He focuses on flying, tries to screen everything else out, to forget the whole incident with McKay.  He wonders what kind of bribes it would take to get Keller to back him up if he claims he was under the influence of alien ragweed.

Sheppard’s not really following the conversation in the back of the jumper until he hears McKay say something about biting the head off a live chicken, followed by Ronon’s puzzled question.

“Why wouldn’t you kill it first?  If you were gonna eat it anyway?”

“The point wasn’t to eat the chicken, Ronon.  The point was to disgust the audience as much as possible.”

“Was not the point to _entertain_ the audience, Rodney?”

“Yes, by disgusting them.  Look, Teyla, I’m not saying it makes any sense, I’m just trying to explain how the usage of the word changed over time.  Originally it meant a guy in a carnival who did weird things like bite the heads off live chickens.  By the time I was a kid, being a ‘geek’ just meant you were _generally_ weird.  It was something other kids called you while they slammed you into lockers and stole your belongings and poured pop over your head.”

Sheppard can imagine this all too easily.  It never would have occurred to McKay to keep his mouth shut, blend in, slip through.

Ronon growls softly.  “You _are_ weird, McKay.  But if I’d been there, I would have done something about those kids.”

“Thank you, Conan, your offer of retroactive assistance is useless but appreciated.  Anyway, it doesn’t matter.  I got harassed because they were morons and I’m a genius.  But being a genius is also what got me out of that school as soon as I could convince the teachers that they had nothing more to teach me.  Being a genius is what will get me a Nobel when my work’s _finally_ declassified.  The morons with the pop are probably working dead-end jobs, if they’re not drawing EI.”

“Rodney, I still do not understand why the scientists call _themselves_ geeks?”

“I do.  It’s like if you’re being hunted as an animal, you lead the hunters the best damn chase you can.”  Ronon’s grin is fierce and knowing.

“Huh.  Okay, Ronon, you’ve surprised me.  He’s right, Teyla.  It’s called reclamation.  You take the word that people are harassing you with and you prove that you absolutely kick ass at being what that word describes.  You _claim_ that word for yourself, claim it as something to be proud of.”    

“So when you call Sheppard a ‘flyboy’...”

“Don’t confuse harassment with accurate labeling, Conan.”

***

John can’t sleep that night.  He’s been resting and napping for the better part of the day, and now he can’t sleep.  Thinking about Rodney, about McKay, hell, about _Rodney_ sleeping doesn’t help because this isn’t Nieuyen.  Rodney’s no longer out of reach, at least not theoretically.  _Theoretically_, John could take himself over to Rodney’s quarters, ask Atlantis nicely to let him in and she would.  Theoretically, John would have at least a moment or two to touch Rodney’s hair, his face, perhaps his shoulder before Rodney woke up.  At which point Rodney might try to deck him and would definitely never speak to him again.  And what does it say about John that it’s the latter that would hurt the worst?

He wants to touch Rodney.  That’s what happened this afternoon.  He wants to touch Rodney for sex, yes, but also for comfort, and he wants everything else, too, everything that they had and lost because Rodney said it was over.  Why?  John’s never really understood why Rodney said that, except that Rodney wanted to attach words to what they were to each other so that he could tell other people about them.  It’s as if Rodney didn’t know that anything you say can and will be used against you.

Then again, Rodney got slammed into lockers in school by idiots who called him a geek and Rodney survived that by claiming the word for himself and now Rodney’s the _boss_ geek in an Ancient city an entire galaxy away from those idiots.  Rodney never learned to keep his mouth shut, blend in, slip through because Rodney never _had to_.

What that tells John about Rodney is nothing John didn’t already know.  But for the first time, it occurs to him that maybe _Rodney_ doesn’t know he knows.  And John promised Rodney he wouldn’t go by his quarters, but Rodney works late sometimes – often, even. 

John pulls on sweats and a T-shirt, heads for the labs.  And yes, Rodney is there, passed out on a keyboard, so John makes some coffee, puts the fresh cup down near Rodney, watches as the aroma penetrates.

“Uh, whuh...”

“Made you some coffee, buddy.”

“Uh, whuh, thank...  Colonel.”  Rodney’s awake now, wary and _not_ happy.  Here we go, thinks John.   

“It’s almost 3 AM, Colonel.  Either there’s an emergency in progress or you have no reason to be here.”

“I’m not as brave as you are about words.”

“What?  No, wait a moment, I need caffeine in my system for this...  Okay, say that again.”

“I’m not as brave as you are about words.  You barreled past the idiots.  I had to learn to slip around them.”

“The chicken or the egg.  Maybe I’ve never been good at slipping around, so I had to learn to barrel past instead.  Sheppard, why are you here?”

This is it.  John’s still not sure he can do this, but he’s finally sure he has to try.  He takes a breath and looks Rodney in the eyes.  “Because I want to have another try at being... what we were.”

“Look, Sheppard...  John.  We tried.  I expected more than you wanted to give.  Maybe I _need_ more than you _can_ give.  I’m not going to try again on the hope that you’re going to change into someone you’re not.  God knows I’ve had people ‘try’ that with me too often.  It never works.”

“You’re not even giving me a chance!”

“You want a chance?” Rodney snaps, “Fine.  What were we?  If you want a chance to try again, start trying _now_.  Put a word on what we were.  I dare you.”

There are words that John’s heard people use.  They die in his mouth.  He can’t answer, can’t look away from Rodney’s flushed face, his angry blue eyes.

“_You_ get a chance, _I_ get hurt, John!  It _still_ hurts, you think I don’t still care?  I care and it hurts and no, I’m not giving you a chance to make it any worse.”    

“You’re scared of getting hurt.”

“_You’re_ scared of words!  God, John, what are words going to do to you that the Wraith haven’t already tried?”

The question sounds rhetorical, but not knowing what else to say, John tries to work it out.  “The Wraith steal human lives.  Words... can trap your life.  Other people’s words... their words mean they have plans.  I guess you’re just supposed to know that.”

“Plans.”

“Plans to change things.  Between... the two of you.  That they don’t tell you about.”

Where has Rodney’s anger gone now?  He looks sad and tired instead, his mouth a twisted line.  “John, let’s get this over with.  Put a word on what we were.”

There are words that John‘s heard people use.  Friend.  Lover.  Partner, in so many senses.  Protector.  Protected.

“Knot.”

“Not?”

“Ronon asked me why I survived, what I hung on to.  I hung on to you.  Even when you weren’t there, I hung on to the idea of you.  When I wasn’t here, you fought to find me and bring me back.  Losing that... connection, I guess, that would be even harder than learning not... learning your kind of bravery.  So I have to learn.”

If there’s a Nobel for stunning Rodney McKay speechless, John thinks he ought to be nominated, because this is at least the second time he’s managed it.  When Rodney does speak, he sounds a lot dazed, looks a little like he’s trying to smile. 

“Idiot.  You never talk and then you can’t stop.”

“And you’ve never even tried to stop.”  John dodges the half-assed cuff easily.  Now, finally, he can reach out to touch Rodney’s soft hair, the side of his face, reach out to take him by the shoulders and pull him in warm and safe, close enough that John can smell his scent, remembered and, yes, loved.  “Loved” is exactly the right word, although John will need practice before he can say it aloud.

“Tell people what you need to tell them, Rodney.”

“Right, of course I end up having to do all the work.  I’ve got to tell people, you still don’t even understand why I _want_ to, do you?  _And_ I’ve got to make sure you _do_ understand what I mean by each word _and_ I’ve got to help you learn not to be scared, which you so _are_ even if that’s _another_ word you won’t say.” 

Rodney’s bitching is muffled by John’s hair and he’s not letting go of John, so John hangs on tight and murmurs, “Trying, Rodney.  Gonna learn.”  His hands drift lower, remembering other times and old habits.  His mouth starts its own search along Rodney’s jaw, looking for the source of all those words.

“John, oh, wait, we.  Shouldn’t... just dive right in.  We’re both going to have a – John! – a learning curve.  And unlike _some_ people – damnit, John, _listen_! – I’m not afraid to admit to being scared.  Still.  A bit.  So we should take it slow.”

“Okay, if we’re taking it slow?  Don’t say things like ‘dive right in’.  It makes me imagine you lying there, spread out...”

“S_top it_, you idiot.”  But Rodney’s laughing.  And still hasn’t let go.

“How about I walk you back to your quarters?  If I’m good all the way, can I kiss you good-night at the door?”

Rodney looks at him with a glint in his eye.  “No, but you can kiss me good-morning in the mess at breakfast.”

If you want a chance to try again, start trying _now_.  So John looks right back at Rodney and grins.  “You’re on.”


End file.
